UK regulation states you have to give a date when anything that is not accessible on your website will be addressed. You can put any date you like but obviously you must be working towards this date.
Until all your images have Alt Text and you don’t have any Word Docs left on the website you cannot truly say your website is fully accessible. In some cases this may never be the case without extra resources but as long as you are working towards that goal that is what matters.
The main website Accessibility issues
Alt Text
Alt Text is simply a description of images on your website so those who are partially sighted can have the image ‘read’ out to them.
No Alt Text – No Audio description
Vague Alt Text – Vague Audio description eg ‘XYZ Blah (1)’ means nothing if read out to a partially blind person
To set the Alt Text for your images in WordPress, Login/Select ‘Media’/open the first image/Type your Alt text in the ‘Alternative Text’ field, It will automatically save, copy and paste the same in the ‘Title’ field. Repeat for each image. Ensure all new images have Alt Text.
Word & PDF Documents
Word Documents are not accessible because someone may not have Word and some older Word documents are not accessible anyway. PDFs are universal and can be clearly read by accessible software but some older PDFs are not accessible.
To ensure all documents are accessible they will need to be checked. Below are examples of checkers
Check if a Word File is accessible
https://blogs.wright.edu/learn/accessibility/word/accessibility-checker-in-word/
Check if a PDF File is accessible
http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/pdfcheck/
If a PDF or Word document is found to be NOT be accessible then it can be
- replaced with a newer accessible PDF or Word Doc version
- replaced with a web page
